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 Elaine Cassidy is no ordinary actress. At the age of 25, she’s played a pregnant abuse victim, a mute ghost, Hitler’s sexually-abused niece, a violent girl who kills her best friend, and a lesbian who grew up in an asylum. On paper, the Irish actress, star of Channel 4’s gritty new police drama The Ghost Squad, sounds about as much fun as trying to cut your toenails with a chainsaw.
It’s a pleasant surprise, then, to meet her in person. Elfin and unconventionally beautiful, she also turns out to be warm, intelligent and articulate, and blessedly free of the neuroses and psychosis that normally plague her characters. Yet it wasn’t always thus; her first role was about as far from dark, twisted and tortured as you can possibly get, as she explains, tucking her feet under her and slowly disappearing into an expansive armchair.
“The first part I ever played was Pinocchio, when I was five. I was originally cast as the fairy, but I had brown hair, and only blonde-haired girls could play the fairy, which I wasn’t too pleased about. And then I was cast as Pinocchio and I was really annoyed, but as rehearsals went on I realised ‘I’ve got the most lines! I’ve got the best part!’ So it was all good.”
It was just as well she got the lead, because Cassidy had already decided on an actor’s life. At an age when most people want to grow up to be a nurse or a train driver, she had no doubts about her career path, and never wavered thereafter. “Ever since I knew what the word meant, I wanted to act. I don’t know what triggered it. I suppose, as a kid, it looks like a nice job, but there’s no real acting in my family. A bit of amateur dramatics, but nothing more.”
So what did her family make of such an ambition? “Oh, I never told them. I never told anyone. I kept it really secret. I was quite embarrassed. It seemed such an impossible idea. I was really self-conscious about it, and realistic enough to think ‘what are the chances of it happening?’”
Not that she had to keep the ambition secret for too long. By the age of 13 she’d landed a part in her first short film, and by the age of 15, her first feature. “I remember my sisters always saying to me things like ‘Oh God, you must be nervous’ and me just thinking ‘what’s there to be nervous about? I’m getting the chance to do something I love.’ I just didn’t understand that. I can understand it now, why they thought that, but I’ve never actually felt that way. It’s never been an issue.”
While still a teenager, Cassidy was cast opposite Bob Hoskins in the critically acclaimed film Felicia’s Journey, about a naïve Irish girl and a serial sexual abuser. “It was a brilliant role to get,” she says, “I was very lucky to be a part of that.”
Was she not put off by the dark subject matter? “See, I never saw that. I thought it was a love story. You can imagine the shock I got when I saw the film. My job was to become Felicia, so all I saw was her story, her search for her lover. She never saw Hilditch’s bad side. She never saw all 360 degrees of him the way the audience did, so I never saw it either. I just concentrated on my own scenes, not on what was going on in the rest of the film. And then when I saw the end product, I thought ‘The bastard! Oh my God, the evilness!’”
Next up in Cassidy’s unrelenting march to stardom was The Others, Alejandro Amenabar’s spine-chilling thriller starring none other than Nicole Kidman. But for Cassidy, the thrill was not so much working with one of the world’s biggest stars as with a hugely talented director.
“I’d seen Open Your Eyes, Alejandro’s previous film, and I thought ‘Oh my God, I’ll sweep the set just to work with this guy’. Then I met him the next day at the audition, and he couldn’t speak a word of English. I was thrilled when I got the part, and the next time I spoke to him was on the phone, a matter of months later, and he was almost fluent in English. I asked him how, and he said ‘Oh, I’ve just been reading books’. He’s a genius. He was 33 when he directed The Others. It was his first film in English, and only his third ever film. He wrote, directed, and composed the music for it. For me, working with him was the highlight. Nicole was working every day, and had the whole film on her shoulders, so we never really got to sit down and have a chat.”
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The tone of the film was bleak, and Cassidy’s own role was, as ever, a tragic one. Yet with her fragile beauty and lilting Irish brogue, she could easily find herself a role in a nice, slushy romantic comedy. Is she not tempted to go down a more cheerful path?
“Just lately, actually, I’ve thought it might be quite interesting to do a romantic comedy. It shouldn’t be underestimated, that sort of thing isn’t an easy role. It takes a lot of skill in a completely different area. I suppose I just go for different characters; I never want to play the same role twice. It’s much more interesting to explore and evolve, to go into worlds that I’ve never been in. And romantic comedy is one I’ve never done. Who knows? One day, hopefully I will.”
In the meantime, next up is The Ghost Squad, a raw, fast-paced and powerful eight-part series about an elite group of officers who run covert investigations into potentially corrupt police officers. Once again, it marks a new direction for Cassidy. She did TV last year, with the BBC’s production of Fingersmith as a mini-series, but this is an eight-part drama centred around her. Her character, Amy, appears in almost every scene.
“Yeah, again, it’s just different to anything I’ve ever done, or anything in my experience. I’ve never contemplated becoming a police officer, and never would. I completely respect the profession, and the people who do it, because it’s a job I would not be able to do. That’s the brilliant thing about this job – it allows you to find out about all the different worlds there are out there, the different lives and frames of mind that are so different from mine.”
Despite all her experience, the hectic schedule of a major series took her by surprise. “Mentally, physically and emotionally it’s the most demanding job I’ve done to date. I’ve never worked at such a pace. It was a real test, and one whose result I’m pleased with. Hopefully, the fast turnover adds to the piece, because Amy herself is always under pressure.
“What she does is an almost impossible job. It must take its toll. There’s only certain people who are made for that kind of work. And Jesus Christ, I take my hat off to them, because there’d be no way that I could do it. I’d crumble within the first day, I think.”
The hard-living Amy can seemingly drink anyone under the table, and then go on to search their homes. If Cassidy doesn’t share Amy’s strength, can she at least match her drinking ability? “No, I’m the biggest wuss ever, and I don’t deny it. I hardly drank when we were doing Ghost Squad; I didn’t have the energy. I take my hat off to her for that, but it’s definitely something we do not share.”
With filming completed on the series, Cassidy is taking a well-earned break, including a visit to her native Dublin for the Irish Film and TV Awards, where she’s been nominated as Best Actress for her role in
Fingersmith. Come January, though, it’s back to work: she’s going back to theatre, doing The Crucible in Stratford. It’s a play about love, loss, cruelty and tragedy set against a background of paranoid terror during the Salem Witch Trials. Just another cheery project in the extraordinary career of Elaine Cassidy. Watch this space.
By Benjie Goodhart
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